Yesterday, the internets were ablaze with rumors (well, really, one rumor) that allegedly gender-shuffling Matrix co-director Larry Wachowski had finally completed a long-whispered-about sex change, opting to spend the rest of his life as a woman named Lana who would haunt the dreams of every embattled publicist unlucky enough to be assigned to subsequent Wachowski Family films. Troubled by the swiftly spreading report, Fox 411's Roger Friedman put in some calls, and today is satisfied that Larry is still happily beschlonged:

On Wednesday, I had lovely chats with people at the sound studio in Germany where the Wachowskis have been making the live action version of the Japanese cartoon "Speed Racer." The folks I spoke to got quite a kick out of the whole thing.

I asked one man in building operations, "Have you seen Larry lately? Does he have breasts now, as rumored? Is he wearing a dress, wondering if it's making him look fat?"

Laughter. "He looked like a man to me," was the response.

And what about this Lana business? Said one woman who worked in the "Speed Racer" office: "On the call sheets, it still says Larry. There's no Lana." She laughed too. [...]

Finally, I did speak with Joel Silver, who executive produces the W Brothers' movies.

"It's all untrue," he reconfirmed for me. "They just don't do interviews, so people make things up."

Hopefully, the assertions of Wachowski's Speed Racer collaborators will be sufficient to quash the rumor before it's disseminated any further. But if the public's untoward fascination with the director's genitals persists and the gossip continues to circulate, Wachowski's media-shy penis may ultimately have no choice but to break its suspicious silence on the controversy by sitting down with Diane Sawyer to let the world know its longtime relationship with Larry is still intact.